We take the occasional dramas of life very seriously, and we should. It is important to decide how to react, what to choose, where to go, who to confide in and how to stand tall and live on. In the midst of a crisis, the world stops and we become its center. Actually, it is still spinning, and we are standing still, in the midst of a tornado. Any movement could catapult us miles away, into unchartered territory. Sometimes, this is the best way to discover new horizons.

In 1984, my mother and I lived together in a condo she had just acquired two years earlier when separating from my father. I was twenty years old and spent the greater part of each day at University. We had a good rapport. Her friends who, like her, were in the theater business, visited quite often and they were hilarious. At home, I grew up in an adult world, but a very colorful one, in spite of the excessive use of alcohol.

This eventually took my mother’s life. She died suddenly in September of that year. What next? My sister and I rented an apartment together. My dad had requested we live together for a year, perhaps thinking that as the youngest one I would need her guidance to get my feet back on the ground. What he did not know, and what I discovered with great surprise was that the wind of change had not tipped me over; it had shaken me into greater alertness. I sought my own apartment after six months.

I loved my new life. I lived alone with my cat, in a small one-room apartment. I loved returning to it after work each day. I had had to leave University one semester short of completion in order to buy my freedom, but it was a price well worth paying. I have no regrets.

I later often asked myself if I had been in denial at the time, but I find little evidence of this. Instead, it feels like an absolutely conscious and deliberate journey, an awakening. Yes, I was sad and missed my mother. Amazingly though, the little girl who used to cry the minute her mom was out of sight or delayed from work, even at the advanced age of twelve, felt very secure and certain that this outcome was the right outcome, ordained by some invisible scenario that was playing out exactly as it should. I had stepped into a new story and a new identity. Nothing more, and yet so much more.

This realization amazed me. I thought a normal person would feel devastated for the rest of her life at the loss of her mother and I occasionally felt guilty for not experiencing such feelings. However, I think the "me" who might have felt devastated had vanished in the instant I had to decide how to handle my life story from that point forward. Having the ability to choose also confers the ability to become.

It has been twenty-five years since my mother passed away. I have since lost my two closest life companions, two cats who shared nineteen and twenty-one years of their lives with me. I have since left a relationship, started over and experienced a layoff from a job I thought looked a lot like a career. This blew me away every time, only to realize that I was perfectly equipped to land wherever I landed.

I wonder if this is not a simple course of action everyone actually experiences to one degree or another. Sometimes, disasters shift our life path, sometimes it is only a mild discomfort or disenchantment that causes us to move on, effortlessly or by way of a temporary struggle. In reality, all the circumstances that throw us a mild or devastating curve are just that, circumstances. At every turn, we must decide on the rest of the course in much the same way as we might decide to bring an umbrella on a cloudy day. We decide with more or less urgency depending on our plans for the day and how heavy the rain appears to be.

Life is a constant readjustment of personality, belief, strength and focus. The degree of difficulty varies and shapes our response. We develop our personalities and skills by experiencing the entire mosaic of challenges and decisions so that in each instant we redefine what “I am” means for us. We may not be aware of the whole mosaic, or the bigger picture, in every moment. It becomes clear when we take stock and realize that the storm changed the landscape and dug a path we would not have otherwise taken. Thus, without the storm, we might have been lost.

Slainte!